Tag: family

Let’s Start with the Obvious

On By Peter WatkinsIn 2008Leave a comment

Dear Will:

So the ol’ 401(k) statement arrives in the mail and I think to myself: “Don’t do it.” I hold it there, knowing that what lies within is the grimmest of grim news, a financial plunge of historic proportions in what has generously been called our “portfolio.”

Knowing better,  I open it anyway . . . and it’s horrifying. Stupefyingly so. But as is so often the case, stupefaction leads to a moment of clarity and self-awareness not seen since I acknowledged in the 10th grade that I would always be a lousy golfer. In this golden moment, it occurs to me that I never  had enough in the 401(k) plan to retire anyway. Not even close. Wouldn’t have survived the first winter without begging lumps of coal from the local soup kitchen. So what if that super secure Lehman Brothers bond hadn’t exactly paid off? In times like these, there is comfort in incompetence.

Which sort of begs a question (for our present purposes, anyway): What other “blessings” do we have to be grateful for? Let’s start with the obvious:

Dana took Bryn to see Twilight—while Seth and Peter stayed home and watched the ballgame. If that’s not a blessing, what is?

Luke moved into the dorms at UCLA. He gets to sleep in every day, treat every meal like a buffet, come and go as he pleases, all without the daily scrutiny of his overbearing parents. What could be better?

Luke moved into the dorms at UCLA. More time to focus our daily scrutiny and overbearing parental instincts on making Bryn and Seth miserable instead! What could be better?

What could be better? How about family vacations?

Who doesn’t love a scraped-up minivan with a busted air conditioner?  Well, we don’t, for example. But when you have to make twice daily round-trips to the ballet studio, a buck eighty-seven for gas is pretty nice. You know, considering.

Rat traps. (Don’t ask.)

Almost forgot: Luke moved into the dorms at UCLA. Now Seth doesn’t have to share a room and instead can devote precious real estate to the 140-or-so stuffed animals with which he shares his bed. Which doesn’t explain why he continues to squeeze his scrawny nine-year-old frame into the narrow patch not covered by his velveteen menagerie, but at least he now has options.

Then there’s the President-elect. Seems like we ought to say something about him since he got Dana to work the phones and Bryn to wear his shirts and even Seth to stick stuff on his bedroom wall. Luke even worked the polls this year (twice, though he hastens to point out that it was a non-partisan endeavor). Now if we could just get that annoying bumper sticker off of the scraped-up minivan, Peter would be happy too.

There’s other stuff as well. Like a job, for instance. In this environment, that’s a pretty great thing. Food on the table, even if it isn’t served buffet-style as in the dorms. Oh, and Jason Mraz (Bryn wants him in here too). Teachers. Coaches. Friends. Microwave ovens (when you get home from ballet every night at nine, that’s pretty important). Yoga. Belts. Laptops. iPods (unless you put them through the washer). Chocolate (dark especially). Books. Rain (yeah, right). Sports. The Maple Conservatory of Dance. And of course family. Dysfunctional though it may be, it’s the most precious thing of all. You know, considering.

PW

The Miracle of Taylor’s Life

On By Peter WatkinsIn 2007Leave a comment

Dear Will:

A couple of weeks back I attended a funeral for the son of a very close friend. It promised to be a very sad day.

Taylor had been born with just a single chamber (as opposed to the usual four) in his heart. He had his first surgery the day he was born. Doctors told his parents, Mark and Tammy Hyer, that Taylor’s life would be a short one—maybe a few days, at most a few years.

Defying the odds, Taylor’s heart held on for several years more than that. It was hardly a normal childhood inasmuch as he had very little stamina and thus could not play as hard (or do all of the same things) as other kids his age. He also had multiple surgeries and took a bunch of medication. But he was in a great family who enabled him to do as much as he could and who filled his life with laughter and love.

About a year ago, Taylor’s heart finally gave out. Somehow he had wrung 13 years of life out of that tiny, misshapen organ. And in doing so, he had finally grown big enough for a heart transplant. Now if you know anything about transplants you know that you can stay on a list for months waiting for a suitable donor. Well, Taylor waited only a few hours—and it’s a good thing, for his heart literally shut down as the donated heart was rushed into the hospital. The surgeon kept him alive just long enough to give him a new, four-chamber heart.

For Taylor, it was a true miracle. For the first time in his life he could breathe. Instead of watching the other kids play basketball, Taylor could join the game himself. He could climb mountains, ride his bike, act like a kid. His body began to take shape, and Taylor was finally just a normal teenager.

How we all celebrated that wonderful, life-changing surgery. His family shed many happy tears as they recounted the unlikely sequence of events that led to the transplant. They offered many, many prayers of thanks for the extension and enhancement to Taylor’s fragile life.

Thus I was stunned when I received the phone call telling me that Taylor had died. Barely 14, he had returned from a backpacking trip, had enjoyed a couple of fun but uneventful days with the family. Everything seemed to be going great. Then on Sunday in the middle of the night, he awoke feeling very ill. His parents attended to him and his father gave him a blessing of comfort. As soon as the blessing was over, Taylor’s dad gave him a hug, and in that instant Taylor died in his arms.

As I spoke to Mark and Tammy about this tragedy, their calm perspective astonished me. Thinking that I had come to their side to give them support and comfort, I found them comforting me instead. “We’re just really grateful that God gave him that bonus year of life to find out what it’s like to be a normal kid,” they told me. “What a blessing for him to get the chance to do the things he had been missing out on for so long.” There was no rancor or self-pity, no bitterness or despair. Rather they expressed gratitude to God for the miracle that was Taylor’s life—a life that by all accounts lasted at least 10 years longer than anyone could have reasonably expected.

I anticipated that the day of the funeral would be very sad indeed. Instead, I found my faith renewed and my love expanded. It made me want to hug my kids (of course), but it also made me want to be a better person. And it made me grateful for my faith in God that helps me to see that beyond the transitory sadness of today there is purpose and promise that extends into eternity.

PW

A Note for Your Mirror

On By Peter WatkinsIn 2006Leave a comment

Dear Will:

The other day I took my three kids to Cold Stone for some ice cream while my wife Dana was at her ballet class. The four of us—Luke (15), Bryn (11), Seth (7) and I sat at the table outside snarfing down our ice cream and working together on an ill-conceived crossword puzzle Bryn had to turn in at school the next day.

While we discussed the possible solutions to yet another poorly-written clue, a woman sat down at the table with us and asked to borrow my cell phone. She made a bizarre call, ostensibly informing her son that she was calling him on someone else’s phone and therefore would talk to him later. (Huh?) Then over the next several minutes she commented on my “incredible eyes,” asked if I go to church, and then finally, as I was heading to my car with my children, inquired whether or not I was married.

It was only then that I realized that this woman had been hitting on me.

My 15-year-old, of course, thought it was perhaps the funniest thing he had witnessed since kindergarten. He quite accurately pointed out that I am one of the least likely candidates for any woman’s attention: I’m bald, middle-aged, and travel with a pack of sniping children. I’ve been married for over 20 years. It has been so long since I considered the possibility that anyone might want to flirt with me that this moment seemed like something out of “The Twilight Zone” or “Candid Camera.” He and Bryn laughed and teased me about it all the way home. It was hilarious.

As we unloaded the car, however, I discovered that Seth was in tears. These weren’t the dry tears he has mastered as part of his daily tantrum routine. These were the big, plop-on-the-ground-and-form-puddles kind of tears, complete with the trembling shoulders and uneven breathing that can only be associated with genuine, heartfelt sadness. None of us had any idea what had put him in this state.

Fortunately, by now Dana had returned home, first to hear Luke and Bryn’s report on Dad’s unlikely encounter at Cold Stone, and then to give the kind of comfort to Seth of which only a mother is capable. She held him for a few minutes while he sobbed, telling him that, whenever he felt ready, she hoped he might tell her why he was so sad. So it was that when he composed himself a little, he disappeared into the study, where he wrote the following note:

“It’s what Dad and the others were talking about.
I want you as my mom and NO other!!!”

As you might suspect, once Dana read Seth’s little note she gathered him up once more to reassure him that she is the only mother he will ever have and that she and I would not want it any other way. It had not occurred to the rest of us that this incident had been anything but funny, but to Seth, even joking about some other woman with his dad—no matter how preposterous the notion might seem to just about anyone else—was no laughing matter at all.

What a nice reminder Seth gave us of the importance of a happy, stable home. Not that ours always is either happy or stable, mind you, but even so: Seth would clearly prefer the status quo to any other configuration one might devise. Would that every father had a copy of Seth’s note taped to his mirror to remind him that what kids need more than anything is a safe, familiar place to call home, a place in which they are surrounded by all of the people they love the most.

PW